July's Editorial in Nature Cell Biology (9, 721; 2007) explains the role of the preprint server — familiar to physicists, astronomers, astrophysicists and chemists — to biologists. Centre stage is given to Nature Precedings, and to how posting preprints and other documents on the site affects possible publication in Nature journals.

As described on Nautilus (http://tinyurl.com/2ue2gq), Nature Precedings facilitates the sharing and discussion of prepublication data. It can host slide presentations, preprints, posters and stand-alone data. Postings are citable (DOIs) and attributable to an author. Although screened by in-house curators for scientific legitimacy (not novelty or quality), they are not peer reviewed, and, as a result, content can be posted in less than a day. The content carries a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which requires only proper citation.

The Nature journals, like many others, do not consider a posting on the site as a formal publication that would prevent consideration of a submitted manuscript for publication. But authors cannot post on Nature Precedings updated manuscript versions that evolve due to a journal's editorial process.